A Reflection

It's the new year and what do I have to say about 2008? It wasn't bad. I think I made very good progress last year. I found my niche you could say. I found it and I've also found some great people and friends. THEATRE ELECTRICIANS ROCK!!! I worked hard last year and now I actually have some sort of savings. I'm quite proud of myself. But that doesn't mean I will be slacking off this year.

This year is starting off with a bang. I replaced my broken laptop keyboard. Louis help find one on the internet. I have finished with all my dental work. Last year was a big one. I had a root canal and then a bridge done. This year I had two cavities filled and I didn't need to ask my parents for the money. I also didn't need to ask them for the money on check ups either. I have a dental discount plan and I plan on getting my teeth checked and worked on every 6 months. At least the dentist prescribed me some drugs. Like Valium to help with my anxiety about sitting in that awful chair and being helpless. I hate being helpless.

I ordered new business cards this year. Louis Lopardi designed it for me. I love it. I should have a digital copy soon that I will post up. He's great as a designer.

I'm also happy that I survived a whole year with Louis and we don't seem to plan on leaving each other any time soon. We still can't get enough of each other if you ask me. We're like high school kids. ;-) Can't keep our hands off each other. We also hold exciting conversations.

I can't wait for what is in store this year. I hope everyone has a great year this year.

See ya soon!

Register to Vote

I hope everyone who reads this goes out to register to vote. I just called the Brooklyn office and their deadline is October 10th.

JUST GO OUT THERE TO REGISTER AT THE OFFICE!!!

345 ADAMS STREET, 4TH FLOOR
BROOKLYN, NY 11201

718 797 8800

Log 843.49.....

Well since I'm not working because I haven't heard from anyone about work, I guess I'll have to write some stuff in my blog. You'll see a surge of blog posts if I'm not working as much as I would like to.

Yeah, I don't like the feeling of not working because well my body feels like crap. I know when I work and I have to get up early and I stayed up late the night before, my body feels like crap too. But this is horrendous. It feels like I have the flu but really I don't.

I watched It Happened One Night via Netflix's instant watch. It was a really good movie. I laughed and was touched by Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I originally hate watching Clark Gable because of Gone With the Wind. I hated that movie. I also hate the Wizard of Oz. I like very few movies that are older than 1970. The movie was also in black and white -- which was a bit difficult for me because I always feel that black and white movies are the most frightening of them all. I guess mostly they can't rely on using blood to describe a scene. You can't see a gruesome image, but you do hear sounds. Sound effects are mightier than an image. As you can imagine hearing something crawl on the wall comparing to actually watching something crawl on the wall. Some techniques of seeing something works. An example for me? Let's say the camera is concentrated on a character talking, but in the background you see something rising unfocused. That for me is scary because you know what it is, but the character doesn't know. So you're anticipating the reaction. A few more of these funny black and white movies and my view of B&W flicks will have changed.

After watching I decided to do some reading/studying. I love having a pen in hand writing. So I picked up An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski. The book itself is long winded and almost unbearable to read. So I'm taking notes. I'm only taking the important stuff and writing that down in my notebook. I don't understand why it has to be so filled with unnecessary "I want to be a true actor" rubbish. All this stuff about over dramatizing wanting to be an actor is making me feel sick. If I wanted to read some wimp's diary, I'd have picked up a trashy romance novel. So I'm taking what I need and throwing the rest out. Maybe I'll even create a website that has all the vital information from that book to save people from reading bad literature.

I HATE ROACHES!!!

I have done all I can to make sure no roaches enter and still I see roaches in my apartment. And it's not even one of those tiny vermins. It's huge water bug types! *faints* *hyper-ventilates* The building has monthly spraying and when they spray, all the roaches scatter. I think I know where they are coming from. I can deal with mice. I can't deal with roaches. Something has to be done.

Where is my expanding foam?!

New Layout

I had to choose a new layout because it was literally cramping my style. ;-) The main reason? I was trying to add the Playlist.com gadget/widget and the last layout was too narrow. It cut the damned thing in half. I did some HTML rendering and tried to increase more space, but I'm just not as well versed in HTML. I did as much as I could, but darn it twasn't enough.

Just a little update on what's going on right now. My internal Hard Disk Drive (HDD) crashed on my laptop. I lost a whole lotta shit. The good thing is that everything that was important to me that I lost can be recovered via searching through my Gmail inbox or found in several strategically placed locations on the internet. AKA Free Internet Storage Sites. I used to recommend Xdrive, but I found out that they were a subsidiary of AOL. I knew bad things were going to happen there. They did have pretty good programming, but recently altered their programming and got rid of the "upload entire folder" option --which pissed me off royally. I am digitizing record albums for my father using the Ion TTUSB record player and I can't be bothered uploading individual files and creating a new folder for them. They were good also because they offered 5 GB of free space. I tried going back to MediaMax but they shut down. They were offerinig 25GB but only 1GB of monthly usage --meaning you could only download 1GB each month for the free service. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who hated that fact. I found out 2 days ago that they closed! (I'm giggling here because now I know I wasn't the only one.) So I found ADrive.com They are offering 50GB for FREE!

What I did to fix my computer, was to find out where the hard drive is stored. Take it out, take out an external hard drive from the caddy. And then swap the hard drives. I put everything back together and booted up the install disk that I got when my computer was shipped. It's like upgrading your laptop hard drive. The original hard drive was 80GB, I've replaced it with a 120GB one. It's pretty sweet. At the moment I have about 87.5 GB free. Nice.

Losing out on a gig

I wish that people would let potential employees know as soon as possible that they have given the job to another person. I really hate people who never call me to let me know this. I'm thinking that I already have the job because no one has contacted me otherwise. Where did this come from? Some employer who felt too bad about telling a person that they didn't get the job? It's like when a superior fires an employee. I remember watching several TV shows and movies where superiors have a difficult time firing an employee because they fear hurting their feelings.

The truth of the matter is: It sucks getting fired or hearing that you didn't get the job. But it's better than not hearing from the potential employer at all.

So please call me as soon as possible to let me know that I didn't get the job.

China: The Whole Enchilada

So I just finished working on a show in the Fringe Festival. This is the very first show I have ever worked on in the Fringe amazingly enough. Though I've been around the theater scene in New York for quite some time. I just never saw the Fringe as a festival I wanted to be in.

Then this show came. I liked it. There are very few shows that I enjoy watching...probably even less that I enjoy running. This was fun. I loved the actors, crew, and all the production teams in between. We had a great venue manager, great stage managers, great playwright, and an awesome script to work with. I hope this does get produced on Off-Broadway and then Broadway. It deserves it. Not to mention, I was also at my alma mater: Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts.

I just read some reviews for the show and people loved it! I loved reading the Backstage review. You can read it too right here:

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003838081


I had a great time and I hope to get to run projections again in the future.